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If we are entering another warming spell, as in the Middle Ages, then Canada definitely stands to benefit. Canada is the second largest country in the world, but a large area is only sparsely inhabited because it's simply too cold. In all likelihood, a warmer north with allow greater exploration and uncover new oil reserves. Canadians who want to stop global warming (assuming it's possible) are working against the country's best interests.

Umm yeah. Even if your oversimplified notion of how things will turn out for Canada comes true, you haven't considered the fact that Canada has a highly aggressive and heavily armed neighbour to the south which will suffer from global warming effects and may want to expand into other territory. Oh, and they have an irrational hatred of anything French.

We didn't "just dodge" an event over a millennium in the future. Wrecking our arable land over the next century by turning up the heat will kill actual people. Let the people of 3000 AD worry about an imminent ice age, if humanity manages to live that long.

Bingo. One of the things that has always bothered me about the global the warming/climate change thesis that its advocates predict nothing but negative consequences. That's extremely improbable. Even if we grant that these theories are correct, it's clear that their proponents stress the negative impact because they need to induce fear to motivate funding and to justify the additional bureaucratic power that they crave.

These biome-specific pH signatures disclose current levels of exposure to both high and low dissolved CO2, often demonstrating that resident organisms are already experiencing pH regimes that are not predicted until 2100

These biome-specific pH signatures disclose current levels of exposure to both high and low dissolved CO2, often demonstrating that resident organisms are already experiencing pH regimes that are not predicted until 2100

The paper doesn't say what you think it says. It shows that there are wide variations in ocean acidity in the short term. The issue of the effect of long term changes in average acidity is not addressed. After all, we have daily and yearly temperature cycles -- but the polar caps are melting and the glaciers are retreating as a result of longer term average changes.

If you actually read the article, the article made no such claim that "we have nothing to worry about". The fact that specific organisms may well at brief times be already experiencing pH levels not predicted for the ocean as whole until 2100 is not a particularly worry free finding, since it may indicate that such organisms are already near their tolerance levels for certain periods of time. The study also indicates that total dissolved CO2 may be far more important than pH and this is precisely what those who study fish behaviors are finding. High carbon dioxide concentrations severely impacts orientation behavior and response to sounds in juvenile fishes causing them to be much less able to locate suitable bottom types and avoid predation. Consequently, the article is consistent with the findings of others that 1) increasing carbon dioxide levels in the ocean have the potential to seriously disrupt ecosystems, even though pH may not be the prime driver and that 2) the consequences of increased carbon dioxide pollution must be further studied and an increasingly fine scale of measurement.

Despite your over eagerness to misinterpret the findings to suit your ideology, your pointing the study out is appreciated.

One of the things that has always bothered me about the global the warming/climate change thesis that its advocates predict nothing but negative consequences.

You are confusing two different groups of people.

Climate scientists are pointing out that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere increases the temperature, and that this is well known, although the amount still has large error bars-- about plus or minus fifty percent, actually. These aren't "advocates;" this is science: ordinary, messy, plodding, data-intensive, science.

For saying this, however, climate scientists are being attacked relentlessly. It's a politically driven argument, not a scientific argument, which means that it can't be refuted by any amount of data.

There is another question, which is, what will the effects of this warming be? Since the deniers won't even credit that carbon dioxide has a warming effect at all, the odd result is that the ONLY people discussing the effects of temperature increase are the ones looking at negative effects. It's a one-sided debate because the other side has abdicated. They find it easier to attack the scientists than actually look at what the effects will be.

I do predict, however, that eventually the terms of the debate will change, and the deniers will start changing their argument to "well, we may be increasing the temperature, but that's a good thing. We want to increase the temperature."

Actually, I'm looking forward to that shift. First, I really would like to see both sides looking at effects. But, mainly, iI\t's a lot better than the "scientists are frauds and scientific results are a hoax and global warming is a scam" that is currently the argument.

I do predict, however, that eventually the terms of the debate will change, and the deniers will start changing their argument

You got the tense wrong - I've been noticing a steady shift in online arguments over the last few years. The sequence goes approximately like this:

"The earth isn't warming, if anything it's getting colder."

"Maybe the earth is warming, but this is due to (natural climate flucations|sunspots|God)."

"Sure, CO2 emissions could be raising the global temperature, but we can't stop this without (totalitarian social engineering measures|China|reverting to a pre-industrial level of civilization)."

"Sure, CO2 emissions are raising the global temperature, but is this really such a bad thing?"

"Let's emit even more CO2 so we can make plants happy and grow bananas in Manitoba!"

At this rate, in a few years I expect to see the "skeptics" claiming that we have a profound moral duty to avoid public transportation, run our SUV engines and AC in the parking lot, and convert all of our solar and wind facilities into coal-fired plants. (Think of all the Eskimo children who will be saved from hypothermia!)

So let me put it to you this way: The Earth's temperature is rising. So fucking what? It has been much higher in the past. Life not only survived - it kicked ass.

What are you, some kind of earth-mother-worshiping hippie?

Yeah, of course life will survive. It's survived far worse than we've thrown at it -- the KT event, the Oxygen Catastrophe -- and yet life kept on ticking.

"So fucking what?" says the dinosaurs, says the anaerobic bacteria, says every species that went extinct while life went on.

Life on earth is extremely robust. Individual species, not so much. Or just our societies. Frankly there's a wide range of consequences that I care about from the extinction of the human race to simple political upheaval as the locations of arable land change that I don't want to face; the fact that "life" will continue on blissfully uncaring not making one fucking bit of difference to me.

"What about all those areas that are going to become better farming land due to a warmer climate?"

Yes, they sure do, and entire communities are now starving and moving out of Northern Mexico, but anyone who has spent anytime in West Texas and Oklahoma this past summer knows that the increasing heat and dryness also affected a lot of farmers north of the border.

Keep in mind that we are presently coming out of a solar minimum and have had a prolonged La Nina event tied to the SO, yet even so we had the 9th highest year on record. Coming out of this natural cyclic cooling cycle will mean substantially warmer temperatures. All those folks in Texas and Oklahoma better be ready for some real heat and dryness, not the relatively cool spell they had this past summer. Hansen et all predict it will come in 2013 or 2014, given the past record of periodicity coupled with the constantly increasing warming trend.

Farmland is the result of thousands of years of river flows, lake beds, animal and plant decay and sediment.

A location that is currently a pure desert like the Sahara will NOT be possible to farm. Certainly a few semi-arid or seasonally arid regions may be slightly less arid, but there are almost no global climate models that support an increase in farmland.

Many of the places that will thaw (Siberia, Northern Canada) have soils that are very alkali and not suitable for farming. Many of the other places are at high altitude and wouldn't be suitable anyway.

The places that are most likely to become farmland in a scenario of temperature increase are river deltas which may dry up to some extent, and those regions that are semi-arid or seasonally arid, but an equal (or greater) number of those will dry up. Places like Texas and Oklahoma are most likely predicted to become much drier, but much more subject to violent storms. Places like Iowa and Kansas will likely dry up to resemble central Texas or Oklahoma, where soil requires extensive irrigation to grow anything of value. Places like Wyoming and Montana may benefit from increased rainfall due to the low pressure that results from changing currents, but those places have very poor soil and probably won't suddenly be a replacement for Iowa. Maybe southern Alberta would have a huge increase in the output of farmland, but northern Alberta has terrible soil (tar sand?) and Saskatchewan is spotted with rocky places with poor soil (badlands) just like the Dakotas.

The point is.... I have never heard an actual climate scientist claim that every single spot on earth will become less hospitable. This is a political/simplistic polemic. In fact, the South Ocean stands to benefit hugely with really nice weather in the models I've seen, but there's no farmland there.

There are good effects of global warming, and there are bad effects. It's sometimes hard to predict which are which. What we do know is that it is change, and a major one, to the support system which keeps the human race alive. Unmoderated change is likely to be a bad thing, and we know that lots of the effects will be bad. Best not to run the experiment with our only life-support system.

Take the article you linked to: Ok, so that's an increase in arable land. This will be offset by other lands becoming less useful. The total might be higher or lower: Hard to say for sure. However, the Sahara doesn't have great soil, so even if it's wet enough to grow crops, it's unlikely to be as productive as, say, the American mindwest. Also, many plants are fairly picky about the conditions they grow in. Temperatures, elevation, type of soil, total rainfall, rainfall pattern, length of growing season, ratios of daylight to darkness during the growing season, all of these are known to impact the productivity of many crops. Taking a crop that grows well in one place and moving it someplace else often cuts yield significantly. Even if the total amount of arable land goes up, that doesn't mean we'll be able to grow more useful crops.

Global warming is a massive uncontrolled experiment, and if it goes badly humanity will suffer for it. We don't necessarily know it will go badly, but it appears at least as likely as it going well. (In fact, it appears more likely, overall.) I'd rather avoid that type of situation.

It would indeed be wonderful if the ancient Saharan monsoons returned [wikipedia.org]. But from the last page of your link:

Max Planck's Claussen said North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modelers.Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen added."Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend."

You link to an article that explains that in one particular region of the Sahara the localised effects of climate change may have caused more rain, and hence desert greening. This does not mean that the same thing will occur everywhere in the world. In fact, desertification is increasing [aph.gov.au]. Consider some other recent evidence:

Predicting the world's overall changes in food production in response to elevated CO2 is virtually impossible. Global production is expected to rise until the increase in local average temperatures exceeds 3C, but then start to fall. In tropical and dry regions increases of just 1 to 2C are expected to lead to falls in production. In marginal lands where water is the greatest constraint, which includes much of the developing world but also regions such as the western US, the losses may greatly exceed the gains.Climate myths: Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production [newscientist.com]

You do know it doesn't take humans a century to build a farm, right? It's also a very parallelizable activity. There's simply no basis in facts for your statement, which makes me wonder what your intention with posting it would be.

(I have a 30 ft orange tree and plant at least 3-4 tomato plants in my backyard and will never buy either of those products if they come from Florida. Nothing against the state, just the industry. I'm sure your homegrown oranges in FL are as awesome as mine are in CA:)

No it doesn't. Many plants grow in sand just fine. After a while you plow those under and they leave the trapped carbon in the soil. Then the soil is suitable for conventional cereal crops. I visited a farm in Africa where they were doing this. It takes a couple years at the most.

Let's say the new arable land is in the Sahara. Do you think all the midwestern American farmers will be happy to abandon their lives to go move to a foreign country? Or are we going to basically have a massive spike in unemployment while simultaneously waiting for natives of the area to learn the trade?

How much will it cost to move all of the machinery to the new farms? And what about top soil? That doesn't grow overnight. Even if the climate in the Sahara makes it arable, that doesn't mean we'll be able to grow anything there for at least a few years.

And how about distribution? How long will it take to replicate the American interstate highway system in a patchwork of third world countries?

And how about the new cost of food, which has to be shipped to the US from overseas after centuries of us being able to feed ourselves?

How about the plant species themselves, which have been selectively bred to thrive in certain environments which might not match the environments around the new farms?

Even a few years of this would bring our country to its knees. Please try to actually think a position through before taking it. (And that goes double for you mods!)

I don't trust any form of science when it's delivered in a political context.

Your words "funny that's the one study you trust" is an example of confirmation bias. [wikipedia.org]

The short story is that there isn't a single pundit who won't happily grab the one "study" that confirms all his beliefs and croon it to the world while simultaneously ignoring every other story.

This problem is worse than it might first appear. It is practically intrinsic to the inferential statistics used in modern studies such that 1 in N studies will, with a degree of reliability, produce exactly the wrong conclusion. The statistics aren't perfect. Drawing random samples from a normally distributed population will sometimes indeed produce samples not representative of the distribution itself. It happens.

So normal science, even when practiced well, will occasionally throw the confirmation-bias favoring pundit and other Joe Schmoe a bone, and we end up with a nation of smug ignoramuses who preen about their confirmed beliefs, but who in fact know very little at all.

It's politically correct and it's also wrong. If you want there to be fewer people you want there to be fewer born. And the best way to ensure that is to make sure that nobody has to have a dozen babies for a couple to survive to maturity. Which means generous social programs to ensure that children survive to at least adulthood and similar assistance for those entering old age.

And that's been consistent across cultures and continents rich countries have lower birth rates than developing ones.

Not exactly. Those researchers say 240ppm or more averts an ice age. Maybe so. We're well beyond that now, so their conclusion is academic, and not mutually exclusive with the conclusion of other climate researchers that even higher concentrations could produce an irreversible greenhouse tipping point.

Knowing that a certain amount of emissions might have been beneficial doesn't even remotely lead to the conclusion that unchecked, unlimited emissions are therefore always going to be beneficial.

Now they just claim it isn't caused by humans. Global warming deniers are the new creationists - moving goalposts every time they are proven wrong because they can't stand what science is telling them. They have zero credibility.

Now they just claim it isn't caused by humans. Global warming deniers are the new creationists - moving goalposts every time they are proven wrong because they can't stand what science is telling them. They have zero credibility.

The only data I trust is the Satelite data from about 1980 forward. Those are pretty unbiased numbers. To me the ice core and tree ring data is open to lots of selection bias.I know they attempt to correct and fit the data. But when you are trying to pull data out of the mud Indont have lots of confidence in it.

So how come it is humans warming up the planet when the planet not only has been warmer in the past without humans, but has done so in the last 10,000 years before humans even had domesticated animals.

I can believe our burning CO2 into the atmosphere is bad. the smog is a great example of that. However that doesn't mean that this isn't part of a normal warming and cool trend the planet goes through. In fact not a single person who supports Global warming will even look at such data.

Of course the planet has been hotter / colder than now, but that's not really relevant. The climate scientists have been able to link / model the changes this time and a significant factor is the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. Also, from my personal point of view, the rate of change is very significant. "Natural" climate change tends to be very slow, what we are experiencing now isn't.

So water levels increase? It will be disastrous, but the majority will survive.

Yes the majority will survive the (direct) effects of climate change. But that's not the point. It will cost us a "shed load" of money to adapt, move our cities / agricultural locations etc. from where they are now to wherever they need to go. That is the main point

There will also be conflicts over land / resources. You used to be sitting on a great bit of agricultural land, now it's a desert, or under water. Or your major city no longer has a water supply. That's the problem we face.

Not really. Biologists know a great deal about how plants and animals responded in the past to climatic perturbation over millions of years of time. The big problem we have with AWG is that the rate at which the warming is occurring is between 100 and 1000 times faster than it has ever been recorded, except perhaps at ground zero for a few bolide impacts and volcanic eruptions. Consequently, extinctions are going to be massive.

A recent simulation taking into account expected shifts in ecosystems, suggested that within 300 years 85 percent of all ecosystems would see more than 75% species change, with the largest changes taking place through the loss of temperate forests worldwide. This is not out the realm of possibility and probably a very conservative estimate, when one considers that during 2011 the state of Texas alone lost 10% of its trees (about 500,000,000 trees) during a single year's drought. Temperatures in Texas within 100 years are expected to exceed 100 F for more than 200 days out of the year. When one considers that Texas is the second larger producer of agricultural products after California, producing $16,498,398,000 per year or 6.84% of all US agriculture that is going to be one very big hit, not even considering that similar effects would also be felt across most of the Southern United States.

The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago and was going on for about 100,000 years before that. I think you're a bit confused about the age of those ice sheets that are melting. So, what data precisely is it that you believe "not a single person who supports Global warming" will even look at? You haven't actually asserted any particular set of data, just speculated that the current trends are part of a normal warming trend and that the people studying climate haven't considered that possibility. You'll have to do a little better than that. It is possible that the climatologists are wrong, but at least they seem to be putting the work in.

Also "So water levels increase? It will be disastrous, but the majority will survive.". Considering how heavily leveraged the human race is in all sorts of ways right now (and how many live on the coasts), I don't have that much confidence that it will be the majority that will survive. In any case, the callous attitude you display that, sure a huge chunk of the human race will suffer and die, but it probably won't be you, so you don't really care is just really swell. Really great, you know. It seems to be the one a lot of denialist types fall back on in the end. They don't care if they're actually right or wrong, or what the consequences are. They've chosen their position, and that's it. I just don't understand why you bother.

This argument that because the Earth, in the past, has changed on geologic timescales, it must also do so in the future, is ridiculous.

Humanity has, undeniably, the capacity to rapidly change the climate on Earth. Consider what would happen if all nuclear warheads in existence were suddenly detonated.

Just because "natural" processes take eons to effect change does not imply that processes driven by humans must also take long time periods to unfold. Humans

Humanity has the power, and is indeed, rapidly changing the Earth's environment. You can argue about the effects that we might have, but this argument that the Earth is too big, and changes in timescales too lengthy for us to observe, is at best disingenuous, and at worst vastly harmful to our collective prosperity.

That is the crucial part of your post. It is obvious that the scientists who study this field know more about it than the average person. So why do the people who admit they don't understand the issue keep wanting to claim that the scientists are wrong.

They claim to be sceptics, but they invariably accept without question the findings that match what they want to believe - that we might have dodged an ice age or it might not be warming as fast as predicted (even though they have to gloss over the part where it is getting warmer).

Then they will make simplistic claims to argue against the scientific world as if the scientists never thought of that aspect, like that the temperature rise is just within the margin of error or that scientists hadn't considered that the temperature changes could be due to the sun. If only just one scientist would study the sun then we could settle this quickly. Oh wait, they do!

Finally, they attempt to trivialise the problem by saying that all this fuss is just about being a tiny bit warmer, or that it is just about being less snow in the world. This ignores all the things that scientists predicted that is already occurring, like increased extreme weather events and various species dying out.

My point is that this debate tends to be those who know what they are talking about and those who don't. If you were a sceptic, which side would you consider to be more trustworthy?

Ohs Nos! Those poor kids in Canada are going to go without 20 feet in snow!

That 20 feet of snow becomes our drinking and irrigation water in the summer.

Without it, there could easily be a month of no irrigation. That's a big fucking deal.

And the further south you go in NA, the more months without irrigation / drinking water. Hope no-one plans on moving north when the water runs out in the south during the summers; by then the border might be as well guarded as the US / Mexico border.

"Billions of people in the world? You expect me to believe that? Have you actually met them all? I thought not!"

97% of scientists who are experts in this field are sufficiently convinced. They may end up being wrong, but they are in the best possible position to assess the evidence. You are not. Even if you *are* a climate scientist, you don't get to overrule the rest of your peers ju

It's quite a well known graph but it does not show that it has been hotter in the past 12,000 yrs than now, (which is what you implied with your original comment about records), in fact it shows the opposite. It shows 2004 was significantly warmer than at any other time during the Holocene. The thick black line is a moving average with an interval measured in centuries (it states a 500yr interval was used for sediment proxies, other proxies are likely to be 1-200yr intervals). Since the duration of recent human induced warming fits entirely within the last moving average interval the graph smooths out the hockey stick at the end. In other words the last 50yrs is virtually invisible on the 12,000yr X axis and only accounts for part of the last data point on the black line. This is why they included the hockey stick insert for comparison, it effectively zooms in on the last 2Kyrs of the main graph to display the rapid increase that is not apparent in the moving average.

All climate scientists of any repute from the last 50yrs will tell you CO2 has been the dominant regulator of the Earth's climate since multi-cellular life first appeared 500M years ago, the last time CO2 was at similar levels as today [skepticalscience.com] was 3M years ago, long before humans walked the Earth.

Without those, we're talking an ice free passage in the Arctic from Greenland to Alaska, the melting of enough of Antarctica to raise sea level 4-5 meters (that's 20 feet GW deniers), and hurricanes with enough energy input to make Florida look like a 24/7 disaster zone.

That said, I will bet Mittens' $10,000 that GW deniers will try to mod this entire topic down, using some of the $50,000 I have invested in energy stocks to pay for the posters.

If this is the 9th hottest year, and 8 of the past 12 have been hotter, then wouldn't that technically also make 2011 one of the four coldest years out of the past 12? Doesn't change the fact that the past decade has been hotter than the others, but the phrasing is considerably more alarmist than "2011 4th coldest year out of past 12!!"

There has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years. The Earth is not getting hotter, it got hotter and then, a decade and a half ago, it stopped. This may well be a blip; noted climatoligist Professor Phil Jones, Director of Research for the University of East Angliaâ(TM)s Climatic Research Unit certainly thinks so. But claims the Earth hasn't been getting warmer for the last 15 years are not fantasies; they are the actual consensus of real, respected climate scientists, based on the best data available.

so many uneducated fools going on like there ignorance should hold the same value as an experts.

For those people saying 'there will be a benefit because of more [whatever]. You might want to wonder why you think after there is more arable land, or warmer Canada, the temperature wont continue to rise?What the cap are gone, are only buffer will be gone. Right not, they are acting as a heat sink. SO all the new land continue to with :a) get get hotter and then drier, orb) so much cloud cover appears plant find it difficult to grow.

Oh, and there is less sunshine hitting the ground, and it has started to impact plant growth. granted a tine amount, so far.

All this talk about whether global warming is natural or is caused by burning things doesn't really matter. Why are we looking for a scapegoat? All that matters is whether or not the earth is getting warmer. If it is, whether it's natural or not, we had better start preparing. I have yet to hear a single credible plan about how anyone is going to stop the billions of humans on the planet from burning stuff to survive. Let's face it. It's just not going to happen.

Maybe SUVs will get outlawed in the US. Hooray! I hate the things. Maybe a 70 mpg minimum will be required for any non-commerical vehicle sold in the US (if you tried that for commercial vehicles you'd have mass starvation which could be another 'solution' I suppose). Maybe we'll build a few more nuclear power plants although I think NIMBY will prevent most of that.

Maybe England and Canada and Australia will follow along as they so often seem to do with whatever silly idea the US comes up with. Or maybe not. In any case the rest of the planet representing the majority of land area and population will just laugh and continue to burn things until they run out of things to burn. And yes this includes trees and coal. And those laughable drop-in-the-bucket schemes that the US will come up with wouldn't have delayed the end by much anyway. People are going to do what they must to survive and that usually involves burning things.

So if AGW is true then our species is doomed and there is no way around it. I propose a possible solution. The end will take at least a millenium. That gives us (especially the US) the chance to start putting all the money that would have been spent catching, imprisoning, and executing millions of climate criminals and building hundreds of thousands of nuclear power plants everywhere and cleaning up the inevitable accidents into a new era for the space program.

See how I did that? The greens have their agenda (although they are pretty vague about what exactly that is), and I have mine. Let's start devoting every dollar we now spend on the defense budget into building an interstellar generation ship big enough for a few thousand people to live on. That will be a start. Maybe by the time the end comes in 1000 - 100,000 years we will be fully prepared to live off world and will have colonized other star systems. It is funny that the very thing that allowed us to flourish as a technological species, heat engines which create electricity and do the work that we used to require things like horses or rivers to do, will have become our doom.

While the US and maybe a few close allies could Francify their electricity production by going nearly 100% nuclear and introduce bumper car like transportation systems with electric cars that are powered by nuclear powered overhead wires once they reach the major highways, is the rest of the world going to be able to do that? Maybe eventually but not right now. I think much of AGW is based on the idea that we will essentially never run out of fossil fuels, but nuclear fuel will eventually run out. There is only a finite supply of uranium etc on this planet. So then it's either burn or face massive die offs of just leave the planet. So we should start preparing for that. We have no idea whether intelligent life in the galaxy is rare, but it may be. We should do everything we can to preserve our species regardless of what may happen to this particular planet.

If you're Canadian or Ukranian, buy agricultural stocks. Your growing season is about to get a lot longer (enabling multiple harvests per year which used to be limited to lower latitudes), several of your competitors in agricultural products are going to be less productive, and your agricultural lands a LOT more productive.

The best thing you can do to reduce carbon emissions is to not procreate.

Seriously, think it through. If you have children, each of them and their descendants will be CO2-producers. They will consume energy, they will buy manufactured goods, they will eat, they will travel. All of these activities create CO2.

Save the earth. Chop your dick off.

Now, about places in the world where population growth is occurring...

Ice ages, hot periods, floods, land scape changes, saltier oceans. The climate and Earth is always changing. Always has been and always will be. With or without us.

And this is the real crux of the issue. The only way we're going to be able to support 9+ billion people on this planet is if we keep things running pretty much the way it is now. Even then, the odds aren't in favor of human beings maintaining Business As Usual given the typical political, economic and social miseries that we tend to inflict upon ourselves and each other.

Now, add some major shifts in food production, water availability and the ability of the coastal areas to support large populations then you make it even less likely that we'll see unicorns and ponies in our future.

Of course, the rest of the planet might consider this a major plus. Your kids, not so much.

And this is the real crux of the issue. The only way we're going to be able to support 9+ billion people on this planet is if we keep things running pretty much the way it is now.

I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.

Xerxes ordered his slaves to whip the waves to keep the waves from coming in. He was trying to control something he couldn't in a way that wasted time and energy and probably lives. People who ignored the fact that the sand spit they were building million dollar houses on wasn't there 100 years ago are demanding that something "be done" to keep the spit from eroding today.

As a society, humans are very good at seeing "how things are today" and leaping to "this is how they should always be", even if that means "doing something that doesn't change what's happening".

I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.

It isn't clear that we don't have control over at least some of the major inputs. We could drop carbon emissions fairly rapidly which might mitigate some of the change. We most likely won't.

My point is that, given that the population of humans is either very close to or above the carrying capacity of the environment, then the only way to keep mass human die offs from occurring is to keep Business As Usual humming along. By doing that we have a small chance of dropping the human population over the next century or two to a more reasonable (for the earth) value. Any major change in the economic or resource environment is likely to change things rather quickly. Quickly is going to be unpleasant for a whole lotta folk. You might think it's a problem when you can't get an iPad, but just wait until someone wants to kill you because you have some canned vegetables.

Now, a couple of centuries from now, our progeny will look at the early 21st Century a bit differently but we're faced with a potential Big Mess within our lifetimes. Of course, since the dawn of the nuclear area, we've been at that point but climate change is going to be just another tool in our basket of tricks for messing up things.

I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.

It most definitely does not mean just because it happened before there is no way we can control it. China has started noticeably modifying their rainfall in certain areas. Much of the Netherlands is below sea level. The lands around the Nile, Colorado, Y

Ice ages, hot periods, floods, land scape changes, saltier oceans. The climate and Earth is always changing. Always has been and always will be. With or without us.

Yes. Obviously. The question is how much is it changing, and why. Is it a change that would happen without us anyway, or is it a change that is due to our behavior that can be changed? And is it sufficient that future changes will be occurring without us because we won't be around?

I have no idea how anyone can actually think this "the earth has always been changing" is an answer to anything. Would you say "People have always been dying" to either discount the existence of murderers, or to suggest murder isn't a big deal? It's insane!

I live in Minnesota. We're presently at -12C with a forecast low of -21C tonight. If this is what you call a warmer Earth you could have fooled me. However, I for one would very much welcome a warmer Minnesota--during the winter at any rate.

Global *averages* are rising. And by the models I've heard it means that winters don't necessarily get warmer (yet), but they get shorter. I live in Ontario, and I can remember having snowball fights before Hallowe'en when I was young. This year, we didn't start getting lasting snow until mid-December, and we have had winters in the past few years where we didn't get lasting snow until mid-January. It still gets down to low temperatures (it was -35 here this morning, with the wind chill factor... -21 without), but it does it less often, and it doesn't stay cold for as many months. It's "good" for northern latitudes (for varying definitions of "good"... the reduction in permafrost is wreaking havoc on the transportation network in northern Canada, as we discover that some of the landing strips on fly-in communities are in swamps), but it's really bad for those in equatorial latitudes.

Funny, because a lot of real scientists disagree with you. We know humans have influenced it. It's pretty simple, really. You get into politics when you start claiming "nobody knows" when, in fact, we have a damn good idea. Are you a creationist?

If you think the global weather system is "pretty simple", you need to get out more. The fact is that correlation isn't proof of causation, and most scientists would never accept such "proof" in their own fields, but are expected to accept it from climate scientists.

Until you show that a system that differs only in the amount of CO2 released by humans but is otherwise identical does NOT show the temperature increases, you've tied your wagon to the correlation proof. Otherwise, any of the other differences

No, the study of the Earth's climate is hardly a pseudo-science. It is a hard science based on observation, computational models, making hypothesis and testing them. There have been satellites collecting observations for decades, surface measurements for over a hundred years, and ice core samples going back thousands of years. We can directly observe the output of the sun on the surface as well as in space, the concentration of various gasses in the atmosphere, etc.

I don't recall us closing any ozone holes... By contrast, according to the wikis, the ozone layer is thinning in the Arctic now as well. I'm not disagreeing with the majority of what you're stating, simply stating that I don't believe there have been any effective policies put in place to mitigate it.

The previous Assessment presented evidence that the tropospheric abundances of most ozone-depleting substances, as well as of stratospheric chlorine, were stable or decreasing due to actions taken under the Montreal Protocol (see schematic Figure 1a, b), with the stratospheric abundances showing a time lag due to the time for surface emissions to reach the stratosphere. Based on these facts, it was stated that "The Montreal Protocol is working, and the ozone-layer depletion from the Protocol's controlled substances is expected to begin to ameliorate within the next decade or so."

First the Republicans denied that the earth was warmingNow they're denying it's man-madeNext they'll say it's too late to do anything

Why have Republicans become the party of ignorance?- denying man-made climate changeProbably 95% of all climatologists support it- denying evolutionProbably 99% of all biologists agree it is central to Biology- denying stimulus economicsProbably 95% of all economists (like me) agree it got us out of the Great Depression

Do they honestly believe Faith trumps Facts? Whose Faith? Only evangelical Christains? What about other Christians (I heard the Vatican doesn't have a problem with evolution), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or (gasp!) Atheists?

Or, on the other hand, why does anyone who claims to stand against ignorance and (to be honest) superstition remain a Republican?

I shudder to think what would happen if these views gained (even) greater credence in the U.S. Would we start segregating women like ultra-orthodox Jews want in Israel? Or deny them an education (and many rights) like in Islamic countries? Why can't all these religious people keep their Faith to themselves? And for issues that affect us all, stay with Facts not Fiction.

There were also giant forests and jungles and ocean ecosystems supported by that carbon. That meant a lot of it was in the midst of the metabolisms of plants and algae and stuff, not floating free in the atmosphere. It was a generally thicker atmosphere, making more OXYGEN available, that let the world grow ____ing great lizards (also, they weren't lizards).

We, on the other hand, have increasingly small jungles and forests, and increasingly puny ocean ecosystems, which means that carbon doesn't spend much time trapped in living things. It stays in the atmosphere, which leads to something beyond "warm and cozy."

There were also giant forests and jungles and ocean ecosystems supported by that carbon. That meant a lot of it was in the midst of the metabolisms of plants and algae and stuff, not floating free in the atmosphere. It was a generally thicker atmosphere, making more OXYGEN available, that let the world grow ____ing great lizards (also, they weren't lizards).

We, on the other hand, have increasingly small jungles and forests, and increasingly puny ocean ecosystems, which means that carbon doesn't spend much time trapped in living things. It stays in the atmosphere, which leads to something beyond "warm and cozy."

We also have this lovely whirlpool of tiny plastic molecules filling the upper current of the Pacific Ocean, which is effectively choking increasing numbers of life at the bottom of the foodchain. Can't see it from Iowa, but it's there.

And without knowing how individual regions are affected...there's really reason to think you'll be affected. Sure... some people think Greenland will melt and shut down the Gulf stream and cause Europe to ice over. Which is a nice theory with no way to know if it will pan out or not.

Ah but you see, the argument is that this time it's the dominant species' fault. So let the climate alarmists be consistent, take the blame like the higher human beings they claim to be and at long last shut the fuck up. Meanwhile the rest of us can adapt to the change like nature expects us to do or die trying.

Do you think evolution works like an X-Men comic? Are you expecting to grow gills, or absorb infrared radiation in the next couple of decades?

Most climate "alarmists" (aka scientists) are not worried about "harming Gaia" or somesuch bullshit (though *you* were the one to anthropomorphize "nature", which doesn't "expect" anything, so I'm not sure what that's all about). They are pointing out that yes, many of the changes ARE the dominant species fault, and are collectively blaming that species of which they are members. And they are hoping that the data they provide will help this species - through technology, and not fantasy - better understand just *how* to adapt (both by reducing the change and compensating for it) to what's happening.

Of course the world won't end. But if you don't think it's a good idea to plan ahead and try to reduce potential disaster to the human race long term, you might as well just restate your position as "fuck everyone else". But then don't be surprised when everyone else tells you to go fuck yourself...

Man has a nasty habbit of thinking the things he does result in unrelated outcomes. Native Americans (Indians) used to do a special dance because the last time they did that dance, it rained. They believed that it rained because they did a little dance. Surely, we've advanced beyond such superstitions, right? Pay attention to football fans. How many do stupid things like never washing a lucky jersey or sitting in a lucky chair during the game. I have friends, really smart friends, who do things like refuse to watch their favorite team play live because the last time they watched a game, their team lost and the last time they didn't watch, they won. Against all logic, they honestly believe that the team's performance changes depending on if he is watching the game on TV.

Just like the current global warming debate, climatologists noticed and extremely slight rise in average temperature (less than 1 degree C), and immediately started asking what WE were doing to cause it. Just like this recent warm winter is more likely associated with La Nina rather than a Jeep Laredo, man will immediately consider his own actions as the cause before looking at more mundane causes like a repeating weather cycle.

By the way, last year's warm weather average was caused by an unusually warm summer mixed with a La Nina event that delayed winter in this year. Any year without a winter is going to be warmer on average than any year with a winter, just as a class's grade average is better when the stupid kid is absent.

I'm not saying that global warming is or is not happening. I am saying that it has been warmer and it has been much colder, all before the first ape stood upright and starting carving porn out of a stump. Maybe we should consider more natural reasons for the extremely recent rise in temperature and stop wondering which dance moves caused the rain.

(if their are misspelled words in this, it's because I suck at spelling and Firefox's spell check is not working all of a sudden.)

But if the information they posess is based on BS, should they not be called out. Last year was the coldest in the last 30, which is recorded by the local news, and the local wweather stations.

Are you talking about your town? Who cares!

2011 was the 11th warmest *globally* since records were kept in 1880, and is the 35th year on a row where temps are above the 100 year average. And that's with La Nina helping to cool things. Your information is just plain incorrect.

I hope that by suggesting that we can't be totally sure, that you are not somehow suggesting that we shouldn't respond to the most likely theories out there. When people ask if I believe in climate change I always say yes, but do I know for 100% sure? Nope. But rarely does life produce certainty like that. And science even less. I'll trust experts in that field in the same way that I trust my mechanic, or my doctor, and they trust me in what I do best. Society doesn't rely on knowing everything- because we can't. That's why we all look to experts in their respective fields, and rightly so. I have heard absolutely no credible person who isn't backed by a religious or oil group who doesn't agree on the general framework. But hey, show me the light.

In reality, farmers care a great deal. Even a few days' change in the growing season, or an increase in the temperatures during the hottest part of it, will change what crops are able to grow and the taste that'll come from them. Wineries in particularly are heavily affected by even one or two days' difference in warm or cold temperatures at the right or wrong time for the grapes.

Civil traffic engineers should care, since temperature changes impact what planned maintenance needs to be done on roads. A colder or snowier winter (one doesn't necessarily mean the other, oftentimes a severe cold snap removes enough moisture from the air to limit snowfall while a milder winter can mean more snowfall) means a need to stock up on road salt and gravel. A hotter summer means a need to resurface roads more often and a need to plan against using looser surfacing that can fall apart in high heat (ever noticed a freshly pave asphalt road in midsummer a bit too far south?).

Tourism? Shifting weather conditions can reduce the skiing season in many regions. Even one lost week can mean going out of business if it happens 2-3 years in a row for the smaller operations such as restaurants or private home renters, and the employees suffer too since they don't just lose tips; most of them lose working hours. Too-hot summer weather makes people avoid some destinations in the middle of summer as well.

Mod parent up. I farm, I also trade commodities. I'm outdoors a lot and have been monitoring all this since '80 or so. It's getting warmer for certain. I like it warm, but some of the things I grow don't. And pests that used to stay south of here have moved north to here and we are getting new problems from that. They can migrate quick, but trees cannot...I'm not going to die from the change we have, but another 30 years on this same track - what was productive farmland will be a desert. So, someone will have to tear down that city you live in to grow crops in, because some of the best land on the planet - right here, won't be anymore, and that food's gotta come from somewhere. At our human density, everything that isn't city is farm...more or less. It's not going to be pretty. Gonna vote NIMBY against tearing your city down while you starve? GoodLuckWithThat. Who cares what caused it - we better look into how to change it back!

I think it would be even more foolish to try to "change it back" than it would be to just learn to adapt. What happens if you change it back and end up going slightly too far? What about all those areas that are going to become better farming land due to a warmer climate?

Please tell me what the "correct" average temperature is for the Earth? Even if you could, based on 130 years of temperature data why would you pick the temperature today as the point at which you would stop the change as "correct", when the Earth has been around for 1000s (throwing the biblical types a bone here) to billions of years and based on THAT scale the "correct" temperature might be some thing far different (much hotter, in fact, even if you only include the last 65 million years?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png (ok, not billions of years, but the geologists are working on improving that, I am sure, and it won't look any better for warmists)

I am all for reducing for man made emissions as it is economically feasible to do, I am all phasing out the use of petroleum products for transportation and other purposes as we find ways to do it that don't require making Peter destitute to subsidize Paul to do it. But I just don't have the hubris to say today (or any in the last 30 years) is the "correct" average temperature for the earth and not 2 or 3 degrees warmer or 2 or 3 degrees colder based on a starting date for data that makes today look bad when other examinations of data based on different starting dates make it look like today is really cold compared to where the Earth more commonly has been. I also can't ignore the fact that ice ages come and go and they tend to do so with great rapidity. The only constant is change. If scientists and engineers actually could create a stable environment at a particular temperature set point, chances are we would find out the results of that would be far worse for people than any predictions of anything short of a runaway greenhouse effect.

The poorest people are hit hardest. It's altogether different to live in a nation which produces industrial foodstuffs than to try to cope with the change with what you have by yourself. The international treaties are there to prevent mass migrations and the crash of social order.

It's this why the third world countries are so eager to support global action. They experience the effects first.

"What about all those areas that are going to become better farming land due to a warmer climate?"

The reality is that there will be very few such places, because historically they have been very poor for growing things and consequently have very poor soils. Just because the Greenland ice sheet is soon to melt does not mean the ground underneath is going to be great for farming. There is also the problem that most plants are extremely sensitive to the duration of day and night, particularly for flowering. Higher latitudes may have very long days during the summer, but have very long nights in the winter. Consequently, many plants will not grow under such conditions without massive amounts of additional energy for artificial lighting. Replicating the disastrous Biosphere II experiment on a planetary scale is not going to turn out well.

Ending carbon dioxide pollution is the only realistic thing that humans can do to assure their survival. The sooner we get started the better our chances of success.

It has nothing to do with people's skin melting off, or even being comfortable outdoors. It has to do with polar ice levels, seasonal weather stability and farmland stability. The world population may inflect at 9billion in a few decades, but that doesn't give us unlimited carrying capacity.

American (and global) policy today may direct decide the life or death of billions of people 100 years from now. It's really interesting to consider. If there is a 1% chance that your decision will kill 500 million people over the next 200 years, what is the economic value of that choice?

Since according to US actuarial tables, a human life is worth about $13 million, 500 million people is worth about $6,500 trillion. Given a 1% chance of this happening, this is an opportunity cost of $65 trillion. Given the time value of money over 100 years (the average between now and 200 years from now), it's worth about $3.3 trillion today to prevent those deaths.

Obviously, I'm just making these numbers up, but it illustrates the point. This is a rough calculation that a rational liberal economist might put on the value of trying to reduce the impact of anthropomorphic climate change.

Most people unable to do even simple calculations or totally unfamiliar with basic biology simply have no idea of just how significant a seemingly small increase in the global mean temperature will be or that fact that all indications are that it will increase 3-6 C within one hundred years. They tend to think in terms of extremes and given the large differences between daytime and night time temperature, or between winter and summer temperatures and think this small change is insignificant. However, as all models show the effects over time will be staggering, completely ignoring sea level rises of more than 1 m within 100 years. Presently Kansas City, roughly near the center of the conterminous US, experiences several days on average above 100 F per year. With a 3-6 C global mean rise, Kansas City will experience temperatures over 100 F, 50-100 days out of the year. If you are a farmer, or if you only appreciate eating, that is a very big deal.

Next time you hear a climate change denier, recognize them for what they are extremists advocating for dramatically higher food prices.

who deny that significant climate change is occurringwho acknowledge that significant climate change is occurring, but deny that human activity is significantly responsiblewho acknowledge that significant climate change is occurring and that human activity is significantly responsible, but deny the scientific evidence about its significant effects on the world and our societywho acknowledge that significant climate change is occurring, that human activity is significantly responsible, and that it will have a significant effect on the world and our society, but who deny that humans can take significant actions to reduce or mitigate its impact